So we have this quaint little holiday called “Halloween.” Adults binge-watch slasher flicks and Tim Burton movies while kids dress up and go door to door begging for candy. Grown-ups being grown-ups, we buy our own candy and gorge ourselves silly. All of this somehow goes back to the Catholic observance of All Saints and All Hallows Eve, transmogrified into the autumn equivalent of Carnival as hosted by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Aside from the holiday being awesome, I’ve also heard it pointed out recently that Halloween is the line in the sand that keeps Christmas from advancing any further up the calendar year.
In Mexico and other Latin countries, the Festival of the Dead is taken much more seriously and is, ironically, even more fun. Down there, they haven’t forgotten the “reason for the season.” They’ve kept the muerte in Día de los Muertos.
Readers of this blog will recall that Lea and I have a thing for touring cemeteries around the world. In October 2016, she and I went for a mainline fix of this habit by taking a trip to see Day of the Dead celebrated properly. We didn’t aim for any crummy coastal tourist town, either. We went hardcore: We went to Oaxaca.
(Pronunciation: Wah-Hah-Kah. Now you know.)
Oaxaca is the southernmost state capital in los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. It sits on a mountain plateau in that southernmost bend where the country swerves north into the Yucatan before crashing into Guatemala and Belize. It was home to both the Zapotec and Mixtec cultures, and relics of that era still pepper the whole region. The Oaxacan people and their culture still wear their ancient heritage proudly, of which the Day of the Dead celebration is only the most visible and well-known example.
Now, we did a lot in our week in Oaxaca, and not all of that had anything to do with Día de los Muertos. I’ll save the other stuff for my next post; today I want to focus solely on the Day of the Dead. During our time there we watched comparsas, took photos of catrinas, and visited celebrations at big city and small town cemeteries during the height of the festival. Each place had its own special character, and every one was worth the trip.
Definition time: A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians, and dancers, of which we got to see many during the festival. A comparsa isn’t a parade, but at night they do parade down the boulevards of Oaxaca City, usually dragging a festive mob along with them. During Día de los Muertos, the comparsas are more often than not accompanied by people in costume, on stilts, and/or carrying giant effigies of the dead.
Catrinas, along with the ubiquitous sugar skulls, are perhaps the most recognizable Day of the Dead iconography. La Catrina is an elegantly dressed female skeleton, and she can be found literally everywhere. Though she’s dressed in the finest European fashions, La Catrina can be traced back to the death-goddess Mictecacihuatl, who oversaw the remembrances of the dead in Mesoamerica long before the Spanish conquest.
Ofrendas are altars to the departed. They usually contain pictures of the deceased as well as enough food for a banquet and items representing what the honored person loved most in life. There are many different regional styles of ofrendas, all of which we saw displayed at an exhibit at the San Pablo Cultural Center. Pay attention to the schedule of activities, and you’ll probably be able to find a traditional ofrenda in the act of being assembled.
The celebration in Oaxaca begins as early as October 28. The north-south pedestrian street through the city’s central district, the Calle Macedonio Alcalá, becomes a thriving market full of stalls selling all manner of holiday paraphernalia: sugar skulls, skeletal dolls, bouquets of flowers, religious icons, and knickknacks that you can either take home or leave on the graves of your loved ones, who’ll be coming to visit and trade gossip from the Great Beyond.
If you’re worried about Oaxaca being infested with American tourists during this season, don’t be. We were told – by locals even – that the city is overrun with tourists at this time of year, but one look at the busy (but not overly crowded) thoroughfare and we said, “Pfft! Have you seen Mardi Gras?” In the year we went, Oaxaca was crowded enough to be festive, but not so much that it was in any way suffocating.
October 31: All Hallows Eve
On Halloween night, we took a cab to the cemetery in the Oaxacan suburb of Xoxocotlán, referred to locally as “Xoxo,” where one of the most traditional Day of the Dead observances is held. Outside of the cemetery, there was a full-on carnival atmosphere. Vendors sold food, flowers, and glow-sticks for the kids. A full band played at the city gates, and the smells were that of any State Fair I’d attended in my life.
Inside the cemetery, the noise went down by half. The mood was still festive, but mixed with courtesy and respect. On October 31 and November 1, families in Xoxo sit vigil with their loved ones, bringing picnics to their family graves and sharing news with the spirits of the dead, who are believed to be present on these nights. The graves are decorated with flowers and lit with colored candles. In Xoxo you can also find many examples of graves decorated with tapetes de arena – meticulous sand paintings of the departed or religious figures. For a traveler, this first night of Día de los Muertos brought mixed feelings of reverence and the excitement of discovery.
November 1: All Saints Day
On All Saints, we stayed in town to walk through the Panteon General, the large municipal cemetery in Oaxaca City itself. The cemetery has clearly grown over time, the older sections separated from the new by the complex’s original walls. Class divides are evident as well, based on the grandeur and upkeep of various mausoleums. The cemetery walls themselves are full of crypts, stacked five high and running along the entire circumference of the necropolis. During Día de los Muertos, those crypts are lit by candles, bathing the stone in tones of sepia.
The Panteon General is less colorful than the cemetery in Xoxo, but the monuments are beautifully sculpted. I know that despite all the time we spent, we didn’t come close to exploring all the grounds. We saw them first during daylight hours. When we returned at night, we bought flowers from a vendor outside and laid them on several graves that had gone unattended.
November 2: All Souls Day
On our last full day in Oaxaca, we visited cemeteries in the small town of Santa María del Tule and in the neighborhood of Xochimilco not far from our hotel. Both were very vibrant, with the tombs painted like the houses of Valpariaso and many of which were used as garden beds for a variety of flowers and succulents native to the arid Oaxaca region. The burials in Xochimilco were nestled so close to one another that it was impossible to walk through the cemetery without stepping on grave after grave. The plots in Tule were spaced farther apart, with many shaded paths leading in between and – unless my memory fails – a hot dog stand and balloon vendor near the entrance.
What makes Día de los Muertos special is that it’s not about mourning the dead, but instead is about celebrating their lives. Despite the trappings of skeletons, devils, and other grisly images, the holiday has as little to do with “horror” as riding a roller coaster is about plunging off a cliff. Día de los Muertos is a celebration of remembrance, with a little sadness, but also joy – joy in the reminder that death is a sign that life nevertheless goes on.
Next Time: What else we did in Oaxaca!
So interesting! N great pics.